Cinque Ans.

Youngest daughter turned 15 today.

It made me think back to when I waved nostagically at the battered, worn out #14 steam train, knowing that I would never see it again, and skipped intriguingly across the platform to alight the #15 express...standing shiny and proud in the station.

If I'm perfectly honest then I can't actually remember too much about this time.

I was at school, yet I was trying desperately to get out of it permanently by going for job interviews and lying about my age. I remember being desperately keen not to be at school, and also turning from the goody-goody kid that I had always been, into someone with a lot more anger and defiance against authority.

I remember being gawky and extremely awkward...but probably that's an awfully common thing when looking back to teenage years.

I remember wearing a lot of jeans and brown corduroy trousers. Also sleeveless tops, usually in shades of khaki or undefinable blue.

I remember an awful lot of Boney M music.

Being a nosey so and so and having 10 minutes to kill after coming back from the pub, I dug around a little to try and remember what life was like when I turned 15.

The #1 single in England was 'Night Fever', by The Bee Gees. I remember that disco fever was in full swing and people were attending disco dancing classes by the swarm, so that they could all dance like John Travolta and, of course, doubtless possess the irresistable magnetic charm that he had, in order to wield it over their intended targets on the multi-coloured dance floor at their local discotheque.

A lot of it was really lost on me, as I was never hugely into disco, and in 1978 I was too busy discovering punk and alternative music, because it made loud, unpretty noises and scared old people. (Anyone over 30.)

The top LP - (long playing vinyl disc, containing multiple musical tracks, operated by a 'stylus' and approximately 12 inches in diameter which revolved at 33 and a third revolutions a minute, for anyone under the age of 21) - was 'Abba - The Album'...rather unsurprisingly by the Swedish hit monsters, Abba...and one I think I had in my own collection.

Best TV available on all three of the channels at my 15 year old fingertips would have been 'Wonderwoman'...for some reason(s) I remember that show very well...very, very well.

'Grange Hill' was at its peak for us kids and Starsky & Hutch were the icing on the Saturday evening yummy cake, that was the glorious TV Schedule...when figures of 15 Million bums on sofas per show (or B.O.S.P.S. for short) were not merely fantasy, but considered average.

Top movies...well, Grease was out...sadly...I remember the Summer being infected by the constant drone of 'Sandy-y-y-y' wafting out from transistor radios across the land, until thank God for The Boomtown Rats, who knocked John and Olivia from the #1 spot, after about 3 months of aural torture.

The new Superman movie was much more the ticket for us boy types, and who can remember putting their underpants outside their jeans and parading around in front of the mirror...screaming "Ooooh, look at you...the Man of Steel!!!"

No? Ahh...well...anyways top toys were the bloody annoying 'Simon Says'...a sort of robotic, doughnut shaped, talking machine, Atari games consoles and plastic figures of anything and anyone that had been in the Star Wars movie, which was still huge.

And, that's about all I could find from 1994....*cough*